Japan should overhaul its power sector, dominated by regional monopolies, to promote competition and a stable power supply, according to a draft proposal issued on July 13 by a panel of experts set up after the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The report advocated sweeping reforms, including “unbundling” the regional utilities’ grip on the transmission of electricity as well as generation, and opening up the retail power business supplying households and other small-lot users.

Utilities and the politicians and civil servants allied with them have long argued Japan’s system of regional monopolies that own both power plants and transmission grids ensured vital stability in the electricity supply.

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The Atomic Age is an ongoing project that aims to cultivate critical and reflective intervention regarding nuclear power and weapons. We provide daily news updates on the issues of nuclear energy and weapons, primarily though not exclusively in English and Japanese via RSS, Twitter, and Facebook. If you would like to receive updates in English only, subscribe to this RSS.

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The artwork in the header, titled "JAPAN:Nuclear Power Plant," is copyright artist Tomiyama Taeko.

The photograph in the sidebar, of a nuclear power plant in Byron, Illinois, is copyright photographer Joseph Pobereskin (http://pobereskin.com/)

This website was designed by the Center for East Asian Studies, the University of Chicago, and is administered by Masaki Matsumoto, Graduate Student in the Masters of Arts Program for the Social Sciences, the University of Chicago.

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